The Exceptional

Today is my wonderful niece’s birthday. Because she’s an April baby, I’ve been writing birthday poems for her for several years now. I thought I might have trouble doing that this year — how would I find something in the news that would let me ramble on about how fab my delightful god-daughter is? Well, thanks to Jezebel and Cardi B, I was able to set my worry aside. This poem would need some beyond-the-source-text words to do the things I wanted it to do, but I’m still pleased that I was able to make it work, able to extend my streak of niece poems one more year.

Love, passion, barbed yet fine. Highly self-aware, her wildest, most rancorous emotions as a means of ascension. Swaggering persona, powerful, celebratory, cocky, free. A glorious, uninhibited style, original, contentious, true, galvanizing, hypnotic. She was worth the wait. Her aesthetic designed for authentic finesse. The balance is proof, a testament to her currency. She is fun, perfectly charming, an evolved reality, an ambitious woman.

It’s National Poetry Month! Every year, I choose a specific form and try to write a poem a day in that form. This year, I am trying erasure poems and I want to use news articles as my source texts. I’ve practiced a few times, and it’s already feeling difficult! We’ll see how it goes.

Here’s an edited version of the Wiki definition of this form:Erasure Poetry: a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. Erasure is a way to give an existing piece of writing a new set of meanings, questions, or suggestions. It lessens the trace of authorship but requires purposeful decision making. What does one want done to the original text? Does a gesture celebrate, denigrate, subvert, or efface the source completely? One can erase intuitively by focusing on musical and thematic elements or systematically by following a specific process regardless of the outcome.Also, Robert Lee Brewer at Writer’s Digest has some good points to add about ethics and plagiarism:Quick note on ethics:There is a line to be drawn between erasure poems and plagiarism. If you’re not erasing more than 50% of the text, then I’d argue you’re not making enough critical decisions to create a new piece of art. Further, it’s always good form to credit the original source for your erasures.

Just to be clear …

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about a lot of things. I also have a job. The thoughts and feelings expressed on this blog are mine. They have nothing to do with my job and are certainly not in any way meant to represent the thoughts or feelings of my employer.